bones, sinking like stones
by CS Fitzgerald
Summary: Cheryl thinks that she had dreams, once.


** Author's Note:** A glimpse in the mind of the troubled bad girl of the series.

* * *

><p>I.<p>

When Sue and Debbie first started hanging out with them - for real, weaselling their way into their little tight knit gang in South Cronulla and not just making stupid conversation with the guys in the hallway and leaving quickly before Cheryl had the chance to give her a good and proper_ stay the fuck away from them or I'll scratch your face off, you dumb moll_ - She's worried because she can already see the way that Garry looks at her. As if Debbie is special, different from all the other girls in town. As if he genuinely likes her.

Because he had never looked at her like that before.

No matter how much she had wanted him to.

II.

She's known him since primary school and he had never been like this with her or any girl, for that matter. But this time was different. Gary was crazy about Debbie, and she was crazy about him.

Even though she wouldn't admit it, Cheryl thought it was actually kind of nice. Sometimes. Sweet, even. The way that he'd look at her and hold her hand as if she was the only person around for miles or how he'd talk about her constantly in front of his friends and say the most stupid cliché things. Because at least it meant that he actually thought about the girl. That she mattered to him.

It would be nice if just once she could be that girl for Gary. For anyone. (_But if there's one thing that Cheryl's learned, it's that girls like her can't be too picky.) _

So instead of looking for the true love that she's always heard about in fairytales, she tries to find any comfort that she can get in the arms of strangers and in the beds of men who are sometimes almost twice her age. Yet when she wakes up every morning, looking for her items in the pile of discarded clothes on the floor, she always ends up feeling emptier than she did the night before.

III.

School isn't any better.

She used to walk inside the halls of St. Clements, thinking that she was so popular, that everyone loved her, that they all looked up to her. But that wasn't true. They didn't love her. They hated her. And they feared her.

She can finally see it, _the fear and the hate_, as she walks down the corridor, notices the way that all of the Year Nines and Tens move out of her way and avoid making direct eye contact with her in case she decides to verbally destroy them.

She tries to ignore it and goes to her locker, turned the combination and opened it, searching for her biology textbook. She finally finds it, but as she's about to close the door, she can't help notice there is a small polaroid picture on her locker door of her and some of the girls at a party from last spring. In this frozen moment of time, they're laughing, they seem happy. She wonders, if it's fake. If any of them actually cared about her, or if they just liked sucking up to the animal of top of the food chain because they were scared of her too.

She didn't have any friends. Not really. Because she was a bitch.

_But it's not your fault,_ she tells herself. She had to rule with an iron fist. Because the second that she became nice, that she led her guards down, she knew that one of them would backstab her and try to take her place at the top - the one that she's worked for years to get to and is not willing to let go of just yet.

Slamming the door shut, she decides to build up her castle walls even higher until nobody can climb them once more. After all, she doesn't need anyone.

IV.

But the worst part of her life are all the moments of every single day when Cheryl realizes that she is slowly yet surely turning into her mother.

Like when she turns on the air-conditioning in the car sometimes instead of just rolling down the windows. Or when she puts butter on her waffles after drenching them in maple syrup instead of before. Or when she takes an extra long time looking at herself in he morning, boring holes into the mirror, never happy with what she sees - her hair is limper than usual, the ends in dire need of something, anything; she's too short, too much fat around her things; one eye seems a little smaller than the other, bruising a little near the bottom, and she immediately grabs some foundation and delicately rubs the liquid underneath her eye.

But those things aren't even the (most) terrifying.

Not in comparison to realizing her mother yells at her grandmother over the phone-—that is, when they actually talk to each other (Cheryl's mother usually slams the the phone down immediately after picking up and hearing Cheryl's grandmother start to speak on the other line) - and its exactly how she communicates with her own mom. She wonders if this is how her daughter will talk to her, too.

Or that her mom isn't the only one begging her grandmother for money. Knowing that her mother also ditched class to hang out with boys kept her around just because she was pretty and got the same grades as she does and never got anywhere at all. Never dared to dream about a life outside this stupid town.

Knowing her relationship with Danny is exactly like the one her mother had with her father.

It really sucks that only the worst sayings like that we all turn into our parents are true.

IIV.

Cheryl had dreams. Once.


End file.
